An Empowering song for Comprehension



Over the weekend, I finally managed to watch the film - The Greatest Showman. One of the songs stood out to me and straight away I thought, this is a must for the classroom. If you have followed my blog, you know I am a fan of using music for reading comprehension and you can read some of my other posts here.

The film tells the story of PT Barnum and his circus.

"This Is Me" is a fight song for people who are not accepted by society. It is sung by Lettie Lutz after she and the rest of the circus troupe are barred by Barnum from an after party following Jenny Lind's performance. The bearded lady refuses to be cut down by the fact that the showman is embarrassed by them. According to the song's writer, "It was really inspired by the group of oddities in the film, and what they came to represent and what [director] Michael [Gracey] talked about them representing," Pasek told Billboard. "People who had lived in the shadows their whole lives and for the first time wanted to feel love and acceptance, and even when P.T. Barnum turns his back on them, they make a statement - not only to him, but to themselves - that they declare to love themselves for the first time."

Here is a link to the music video:
Click the picture to access the questions and answers.


Comments

  1. Susie3 May 2018 at 21:23

    We have used this in our year 4 classes at my school this week and it has been brilliant. The children have been so engaged and absolutely loved the song. We did it over 3 lessons - one was a class discussion using some of your question, on the second day they independently answered differentiated questions and on the third day we looked at the moral of the song and lessons we could learn.
    The children have been really engaged throughout, and I have had some brilliant responses from all abilities levels in the class, some of the best I've had all year.
    Oh, and now we're going to use the song in whole school singing!
    THANK YOU!

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